


Whumptober 2020 - Cherik Edition

by luninosity



Series: Whumptober 2020 [4]
Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Hallucinations, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019), Rescue, Telepathy, Whump, Whumptober, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:22:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27253378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: Whumptober theme No 16. A TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY - prompt:  Hallucinations(No one should ever hurt Charles. Never again. Not while Erik’s here.)
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Series: Whumptober 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1986763
Comments: 3
Kudos: 82
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Whumptober 2020 - Cherik Edition

Charles is hallucinating. Erik knows this because the world is hallucinating: improbable pink-striped tigers walk in and out of the walls of the house, Charles Darwin’s having a casual conversation with a young woman in a flowing nineteenth-century gown—Ada Lovelace?—near the stairs, and a thunderstorm’s raging but the lightning strikes cause no damage to the floor or walls. The house they’ve built here in Genosha is in part a replica of the Xavier mansion, the familiar, the good memories; it’s in part new and improved. Right now it’s under siege.

He holds the antidote in one hand. Hank had promised it’d work.

Charles’ telepathy shrieks and shudders. A rocket-ship, all pulp-fiction chrome and swooping wings, manifests itself in the doorway to the kitchen. It’s not real—even Charles can’t make something out of nothing—but it looks and feels and even smells and tastes real: the billow of smoke, the rush of heat. Erik’s senses believe it, for a moment, until it vanishes.

He runs for the stairs, dodging a particularly inquisitive tumble of vines and flowers out of some prehistoric period.

He’s not wearing the helmet, no protection; he doesn’t bother much these days, no secrets from his other half, but Hank had wondered if it’d give him more of a shield against telepathy gone haywire. But he can’t, because he needs to reach Charles, because he’s the one who _can_ reach Charles. Because—

He stops as a wave of black rolls over him, heavy and billowing; he can’t see the top of the steps, the hallway. He can’t see, can’t hear.

But he knows the home inside and out. And his own power thrums in response: reaching out to metal and magnetic fields, to the bones of this house’s construction, from the complicated whir of infirmary machines to the knobs of the dresser drawers in Charles’ bedroom—

He turns that way. Lets familiarity pull him.

He calls, _Charles?_ There’s no answer, but the blackness feels faintly surprised, for a moment.

The hallway’s hot. Sticky. Erik’s forehead’s warm. Charles is feverish, he knows: whatever that anti-mutant mad scientist had managed to infect him with, it’s come with delirium, pain, waves of heat and chills. Erik for a moment hates all humanity and all mad scientists; but, then, Charles would no doubt laugh and tell him not to think that way. That not all humans are bad, just as not all humans are good. All people, really: mutant and not.

Erik would not have believed that, once.

But he believes in Charles. And—after everything, the ways they’ve fought each other and torn each other’s hearts apart and found each other again, over and over—he knows that Charles believes in him.

He calls Charles’ name again. A flicker of awareness pauses to look at him. Good.

A tall dark shape or two stroll out of a doorway. A vicious flare of memory: the cruel glint in the face of Charles’ stepfather, the fists of his stepbrother. They aren’t real but Erik knows they were, once; his anger sears like electric fields, snapping and sizzling.

No one should ever hurt Charles. Never again. Not while Erik’s here.

Charles has saved him in every way one person can save another, has saved him and held onto hope for him and looked at him with such joy, another half of soul and self and matching love. Erik’s own love burns white-hot and fierce and unflinching. He’ll make the world new and clean and safe for Charles, if he has to; he’ll give Charles everything, up to and including surrender, a laying down of arms, if Charles asks.

Right now Charles needs him. Even in dazed cacophonous mazes, Charles recognizes him: nothing’s tried to harm Erik. A welcome presence, not a threat.

Some part of his instincts grumbles at this—he’s always a threat, he’s dangerous, Charles of all people ought to know—but he also knows that Charles isn’t naïve. Charles trusts Erik not because Charles believes Erik’s harmless; Charles trusts Erik because they both know Erik doesn’t want to harm him. A choice, knowingly made again and again. On both sides.

 _Erik_ , says Charles’ voice. Unfocused, dreaming, weak and disoriented. _Erik…_

 _I’m here._ He still can’t see, but that’s all right; that’s just his perceptions, the same way his shirt-sleeves twist and turn and coil into feathers and then peel away over his equally peeling scalded arms, the same way the floor drops out beneath him though he knows it’s there. Charles, he knows, doesn’t feel real to himself at the moment, doesn’t have a good grasp on the world; the projections hide reality in turn.

He finds the bed through memory and touch. Through anchors of power and love and heat. Charles is crying softly, wreathed by flame, writhing amid sheets and tongues of fire.

Erik steps into the fire. Stumbles to his side, clutching the antidote. And sinks down beside him.

Every motion’s drenched in pain, skin melting and hair sparking. But it isn’t happening, it isn’t physical, they’re both alive somewhere back in the reality where Erik’s body’s whole and no disquieting violet wormholes keep opening up in the windows…

The pain is agonizing, of course. It doesn’t stop. But Erik knows how to live with pain. Besides, he’ll walk through hell if it’ll bring Charles peace. _I’m here. Right here. Just a moment, just one moment—_

 _You’re not,_ Charles moans. _You’re not—you’re not real, this isn’t real, I can’t tell—Erik, please, please be here—_

_I am. I promise you I am. This will hurt for a moment, but it will be better, Charles, I swear—_

_Love you—Erik—_

_I love you,_ Erik tells him with entire honesty, with the truth of everything he is; and does not look at the blurry mess of his own hand as he moves, as he injects Hank’s antidote, as he presses it to Charles’s skin.

Charles screams. It does hurt—Hank had warned of that—and it’s effective but brutal, countermeasures burning the virus away, chasing it down, killing it.

Charles screams and screams, and the world implodes: a ravine opening up in the bedroom floor and walls crumbling in, fire dropping out of the sky, a horde of ancient tortoises stampeding through the background, chess pieces tumbling over across a rug, men in suits walking in and shaking their heads as flavors of smoke and scotch and burnt sugar burst over Erik’s senses, until it all vanishes in a final all-encompassing crash of blank white brilliance that doesn’t even register as pain any longer…

He wakes up to discover that he’s lying in Charles’ bed. He’s wrapped around Charles, in fact: clinging to the man he loves. Some medical equipment chirps and hovers: some sensors’re attached, which means Hank at least has been and gone, leaving them privacy. Charles, exhausted and drowsy, is stroking his hair. _My Erik._

Erik thinks wordless devotion at him, not bothering to move. Charles feels tender in all the senses of the word: wrung out, healing, gently touching him.

 _Yes_ , Charles murmurs tiredly. _I’m here. I’m recovering. As are you._

 _I’m fine_. He says it aloud for good measure: “I’m fine, Charles. I’m not hurt.”

“Apparently we’ve both been asleep for six hours. There was some talk of moving us to the infirmary, but the bed trembled any time anyone tried.” _You were hurt, though. I apologize, love._ Charles means this: sincerity in weary rueful blue eyes, in the way he’s holding Erik like something precious.

Erik recognizes that impulse: he touches Charles sometimes that way too, with an emotion like awe. Right now he takes issue with Charles’ statement about guilt. _It’s not your fault! He did this to you!_

_Erik—_

_You did not hurt me, Charles. Not in any way I would not face, for you._ “I believe I promised to keep you safe.”

“You do.” Charles strokes his hair again, touches his cheek; Erik turns his face into the touch. Charles is his anchor, as well: the place that’s warm and softer and candlelit, the place he’d never thought he’d find again, until he had.

Charles says lightly, but with meaning, _You found me. Through it all, everything that wasn’t real…_

“I’ll always find you,” Erik tells him. “I’ll always be real.” _I love you._

“Yes,” Charles says, simple and clear and also real. “And I love you, Erik. And we should rest. Both of us. Right here, like this…” _Here. Together. Yes._


End file.
